Richard Lester (dedikált példány)

Fülszöveg

This book offers a critical appreciation and reappraisal of the worl< of Richard Lester, one of the most significant yet misunderstood directors of the post-war era. indelibly associated with the Beatles because of his direction of A Hard Day's Night and Help and also with the so-called Swinging Sixties because of his joyous sex comedy The Knack, which took the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 1965, Lester has tended to be categorised as a modish director with an excitable camera whose heyday passed when that decade's optimism slid into disillusionment and violence.
In fact, as this study shows, Lester charts that social shift with equal precision, particularly in his masterpiece, Petulia, which prompted no less a figure than David Lean to write a fan letter proclaiming it was the kind of film that made him proud of his profession. Lester's work has always had much greater depth and variety than he has been given credit for. His versatility encompasses the Brechtian... Tovább

Fülszöveg

This book offers a critical appreciation and reappraisal of the worl< of Richard Lester, one of the most significant yet misunderstood directors of the post-war era. indelibly associated with the Beatles because of his direction of A Hard Day's Night and Help and also with the so-called Swinging Sixties because of his joyous sex comedy The Knack, which took the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 1965, Lester has tended to be categorised as a modish director with an excitable camera whose heyday passed when that decade's optimism slid into disillusionment and violence.
In fact, as this study shows, Lester charts that social shift with equal precision, particularly in his masterpiece, Petulia, which prompted no less a figure than David Lean to write a fan letter proclaiming it was the kind of film that made him proud of his profession. Lester's work has always had much greater depth and variety than he has been given credit for. His versatility encompasses the Brechtian anti-heroics of How I Won the War, the surreal nuclear comedy of The Bed-Sitting Room; the swashbuckling adventure of The Three Musketeers with a satirical sting in its tail; the suspense of Juggernaut that also incorporates shrewd political and social commentary on the condition of England; the cinema's most moving exploration of the Robin Hood legend, Robin and Marian; he has even, in his instinctively iconoclastic manner, cut Superman down to size.
This book should win new admirers for a director with a gift, as Jules Feiffer once said, of 'making a film your friend', but also of making movies whose visual wit and imaginative imagery reveal an intelligent and enquiring scepticism about heroes and society. Including comments from the director himself and illustrations from his own private collection, the book is a must for film scholars and enthusiasts alike.
BRITISH
FILM
MAKERS
'S^mj:
Neil Sinyard !s Professor and Head of Film Studies at tlie University of Hull, UK
Front cover taken from the private collection of Richard Lester Vissza